Cancel Culture Isn't Going Anywhere
It's Real, It's Spectacular, and It's Endemic to the Internet
You can tell that the assassination attempt on Trump is going to be the singular news event of the summer, because Republicans are already Pouncing, and this has taken center stage.
Because we in The Alt Dissident New Right have very strong feelings about Cancel Culture, because we’ve been on the receiving end of for so long we’ve forgotten what it feels like not to be, this naturally gives us pause. Is this really the kind of shit we want to be doing?
John Carter says, more or less, Cry “Havoc” and Let Slip the Dogs of War:
The summation of this is: “It may be shitty, but these assholes sewed the wind. Let them reap the whirlwind.”
Obviously, this is not the only take, because it wouldn’t be the New Online Right without a series of disagreements about things. So here’s Library of Celaeno, saying Or We Could Not:
The summation of this is “Yeah, they got it coming, but it’s shitty.”
Obviously, I’m taking liberties with both of these documents, which are written by educated people capable of making their own arguments. You should just go ahead and read them both, create your own synthesis of each. You’re going to anyway.
And it hardly matters. Neither you, nor I, nor the Librarian, nor John, gave the order to put the hit on this firefighter/assassination enthusiast. If the choice had been given us, we might have paused before giving the nod. But it wasn’t up to us. This dumbass committed his crime on the Internet, and the Internet gave him what for. This is what the Internet does.
All the Net’s a stage, and the Derps and Derpesses merely players. They have their ohais and their gtfo’s, and some play many parts. On the Internet you can say whatever the hell you want, in front of the whole Internet, which like a hungry Shoggoth will either smother you in its loving embrace, or cast you down into the depths with the lolcow of a thousand cries. No one wins the Internet. The Internet wins you.
This was all fine when we understood that the Internet was Fake and Gay, a cyberpunk wind-up toy to be fiddled with while researching a term paper or paying your taxes. But somewhere along the way, the Internet became Serious Business. It became the Arena of Culture. It became the Public Square. And there are consequences to showing your dick in the public square.
This is how the Leftists have always justified Cancel Culture, when not denying that it existed. “Social opprobrium is not a violation of free speech,” they’d argue. As with all of their arguments, the unacknowledged lust for power stood behind it, cackling. They were content with Cancel Culture because it was enforcing their norms, their standards. They justified using power against their enemies because their enemies were bad, and they assumed that the intensity of the days meant that They Were Winning, establishing New Norms, not that they were Burning Goodwill like Brown Coal, and that everyone would get as sick of them as Salem got of Cotton Mather.
The Right, of course, has its own illusions about Cancel Culture. Bennet’s Phylactery has a pile of good sense in his recent post:
I agree with most of this. But his inclusion of this image is the most revelatory bit:
Remember this? Remember what happened to this unfunny F-Lister as a result? My brothers in Christ, we cancelled this screechy bint. We cancelled her so hard. Her career hasn’t recovered1. And we don’t feel the least bit bad about it.
Nor, in my opinion, should we. The real problem the Right has with Internet Social Opproprium, aka “Cancel Culture”, is not the existence of it, but it’s unbalanced nature. The rules for the past several years have been as follows:
The Right gets to cancel people for being Political Violence Enthusiasts.
The Left gets to cancel people for Not Being Leftist Enough.
Inasmuch as I believe that Political Violence Enthusiasm2 leads to Actual Political Violence, which back in the 19th century led to the bloodiest war on our continent, I believe that people suffering Social Opprobrium for Political Violence Enthusiasm is Good, Actually. I don’t believe we should cancel Leftists for being Leftists, or for making Leftist arguments, or for mocking right-wingers according to Leftist logic. But Kathy Griffin and that PA firefighter? They fucked around and found out. The Supreme Court came down on that side long ago. It’s a no-brainer.
Friends, there has never been a society that has functioned without Anathema. We all know this, even if it makes us uncomfortable to admit. There was a time when saying the wrong thing could get you Run Out of Town on a Rail, and we on the Right have been known to pine for it now and again. Overall, however, we keep our powder dry for when it actually matters.
But the Left has been acting for the last several years as if everyone Not Them is Anathema, and there needs to be a Reckoning about that. If you recall, this was the whole conflict in the Substackers Against Nazis kerfuffle last winter. We who stood against them didn’t give a moldy dog dropping about Actual Nazis. We were calling them out on their shtick: using “Actual Nazis” to mean “Everyone who offends us for any reason, whatsoever.” I said back then that everyone who called out for deplatforming Substackers deserved to be banned from the site:
I absolutely meant it.
I would happily live in a world where dicking around on the Internet didn’t cost you your livelihood, where people didn’t have to lose their homes or custody of their kids because they danced wrong for the Shoggoth. But we don’t live in that world, and I doubt we’re going to anytime soon. Actions have consequences, no matter how much we wish it to be otherwise.
So let’s recognize that Cancel Culture is just Human Nature jettisoning Others, and let’s recognize that such things are baked into the cake, and also that such things need limits. Monkeys will do Monkey Things.
To be fair, it was already swirling the drain.
This is to be differentiated from the general assertion that the People have the Right of Revolution, and that such a thing may be coming, or indeed inevitable. Acknowledging the reality of Political Chaos is nothing like getting excited for the deaths of your poitical opponents.